Condensers are known comprising a bundle of parallel tubes and two manifolds in which the corresponding ends of the tubes are connected, in a fixed and leak-tight manner. Thus, the fluid of the air conditioning loop can circulate from one manifold to the other, through the tubes in which the fluid changes from the vapor phase to the liquid phase through heat exchange with a flow of air, sweeping over the tubes. These exchangers are assembled by brazing.
The manifolds comprise a collector plate with a longitudinally open wall and a cover closing the collector plate, after brazing. To pre-assemble the cover and the collector plate before brazing, it is known practice to crimp them. For this, the collector plate has raised edges of which a peripheral portion is crimped around the cover to close the manifold.
These known manifolds present the drawback of having to apply, to the portion of peripheral edge of the collector plate, an excessively high force during the crimping operation and of thus risking deforming the cover, which could prevent the cover and the collector plate from being brazed correctly.
One solution for avoiding the problems of deformation in the crimping operation is to use a counter-form, called “fork”, that makes it possible to prevent the transmission of the crimping forces to the cover. Such a solution remains complicated to implement because it requires specific tooling.
The aim of the invention is to overcome the abovementioned problems.